The US military has begun disinterring the remains of eight Native American children in a small cemetery on the grounds of the US Army War College in Pennsylvania to return them to their families.

The disinterment process, which began during the weekend, is the fifth at Carlisle, Pennsylvania since 2017. More than 20 sets of Native remains were transferred to family members in earlier rounds.

The children had lived at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where thousands of Native children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate into white society as a matter of US policy – their hair cut and their clothing, language and culture stripped.

More than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes passed through the school between 1879 and 1918, including famous Olympian Jim Thorpe.

On a rainy spring afternoon, Denise Diggs visited the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. She was in search of a family artifact.

Wearing jeans and a blue windbreaker, she blended in with other Washington tourists, until she descended into a dimly lit exhibition area. There, Diggs began weaving in and out of visitors engrossed by the remnants of a slave ship, a wrought-iron slave collar and a six-foot statue of Thomas Jefferson standing in front of a wall of stacked bricks memorializing the hundreds of humans he owned.

Diggs was on a mission — to find a Bible once owned by her family’s patriarch.

A few steps down the hall, she discovered it, amid relics highlighting the experiences of enslaved people and the role faith played on the plantation. The 62-year-old grew teary as she stared at the Bible; it was opened to the first chapter of the Book of Exodus, which recounts the Hebrews being placed in bondage in Egypt. This was the first time she had seen the Bible on display, protected behind thick glass.

Diggs turned and noticed a tourist wearing glasses was staring at her.

“It belonged to my great-grandfather,” Diggs said, dabbing away tears as she pointed to the book.

“Oh, my goodness,” the tourist replied. “Incredible.”

You can read much more about this historical artifact in an article by Erin B. Logan published in the Los Angeles Times web site at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-06-13/black-history-bible-smithsonian.

My thanks to newsletter reader Jackie Feldman for telling me about this article.

The following announcement was written by the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG):

When Colleen Snyder researched her family history during the Covid-19 pandemic, she did not expect to discover a connection to the legend of Irish giants. Colleen, from Virginia in the United States, suffers from a rare genetic condition called acromegaly or gigantism.

NOTE: According to the UK's NHS at: https://bit.ly/3aQQgpY:

"Acromegaly is a rare condition where the body produces too much growth hormone, causing body tissues and bones to grow more quickly. Over time, this leads to abnormally large hands and feet, and a wide range of other symptoms.

"Acromegaly is usually diagnosed in adults aged 30 to 50, but it can affect people of any age.""

The gene caused Charles Byrne, born in 1761 near Cookstown and known as the "Irish giant", to grow more than 7ft 6in (2.3m) tall.

Medical researchers have previously identified Mid Ulster as a "hotspot" where one in 150 people have the genetic mutation, compared to one in 1,000 in Belfast and one in 2,000 in the rest of the UK.

Colleen first developed symptoms when she was eight, but the condition was not diagnosed until she was 20. Doctors in the USA told her it was rare to develop acromegaly at such a young age.

"Through the years I kept trying to find somebody that had the same condition, get more information about it and I couldn't."

That was until she began to research her family history during the lockdown. When she looked at her family tree she realised her ancestral home was in fact Clonoe, near Coalisland in County Tyrone, the centre of the giant gene "hotspot".

You can read more in an article by Julian Fowler published in the BBC News web site at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-61726811.

Are you planning a visit to the FamilySearch genealogical library in Salt Lake City in the near future? If so, you might want to first read this article published today in the Yahoo News web site at: https://yhoo.it/3xMVGeP:

 If the Great Salt Lake, which has already shrunk by two-thirds, continues to dry up, here’s what’s in store:

The lake’s flies and brine shrimp would die off — scientists warn it could start as soon as this summer — threatening the 10 million migratory birds that stop at the lake annually to feed on the tiny creatures. Ski conditions at the resorts above Salt Lake City, a vital source of revenue, would deteriorate. The lucrative extraction of magnesium and other minerals from the lake could stop.

Most alarming, the air surrounding Salt Lake City would occasionally turn poisonous. The lake bed contains high levels of arsenic and as more of it becomes exposed, windstorms carry that arsenic into the lungs of nearby residents, who make up three-quarters of Utah’s population.

“We have this potential environmental nuclear bomb that’s going to go off if we don’t take some pretty dramatic action,” said Joel Ferry, a Republican state lawmaker and rancher who lives on the north side of the lake.

As climate change continues to cause record-breaking drought, there are no easy solutions. Saving the Great Salt Lake would require letting more snowmelt from the mountains flow to the lake, which means less water for residents and farmers. That would threaten the region’s breakneck population growth and high-value agriculture — something state leaders seem reluctant to do.

Utah’s dilemma raises a core question as the country heats up: How quickly are Americans willing to adapt to the effects of climate change, even as those effects become urgent, obvious, and potentially catastrophic?

You can read more at: https://yhoo.it/3xMVGeP.

The following announcement was written by Syracuse University Libraries:

WASHINGTON —Syracuse University Libraries expands its Preservation Steward agreement with the U. S. Government Publishing Office (GPO). Under this agreement, libraries pledge to permanently preserve print collections of historical Government publications produced by GPO. Syracuse University Libraries is the first Preservation Steward to agree to preserve new volumes as they are published, as well as the historical volumes.

Under this agreement, Syracuse University Libraries will preserve the following.

• • United States Code from Volume 1 of the 1940 edition through all new volumes as they become available
  • Statutes at Large from Volume 1 (first through fifth Congresses) through all the new volumes as they become available

“GPO congratulates Syracuse University Libraries on being trailblazers in Government information and becoming the first library to preserve new volumes of Government information as they are published,” said Superintendent of Documents Laurie Hall. “This is a big step forward in providing access to Government information today and into the future and realizing GPO’s vision of an America Informed.”

“Syracuse University Libraries has been part of the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) for more than 140 years, nearly as long as the University’s founding. We were designated as an FDLP on February 7, 1878 by U.S. Congressional Representative Frank Hiscock. Our Government documents collection includes all types of publications in all formats, and we select 70% of all available documents,” said David Seaman, Dean of Syracuse University Libraries and University Librarian.

“This is a tremendous resource both to our campus scholars as well as the greater Central New York community. Extending the program to include new volumes of Government information as they are published provides the most timely resources to our faculty, students and community members,” said John Olson, Librarian for Government and Geo-Information at Syracuse University.

Through the FDLP, GPO works with approximately 1,100 libraries nationwide to provide public access to authentic, published information from all three branches of the Federal Government in print and electronic formats. The program's antecedents can be traced back to the act of Congress dated December 27, 1813 (3 Stat. 140). The act provided that one copy of the journals and documents of the Senate and House be sent to each university and college and each historical society in each state. GPO has operated the FDLP since 1895.

GPO is the Federal Government’s resource for publishing trusted information for the Federal Government to the American people. The GPO is responsible for the production and distribution of information products and services for all three branches of the Federal Government, including U.S. passports for the Department of State as well as the official publications of Congress, the White House, and other Federal agencies in digital and print formats. GPO provides for permanent public access to Federal Government information at no charge through www.govinfo.gov and partnerships with approximately 1,100 libraries nationwide participating in the Federal Depository Library Initiative. For more information, please visit www.gpo.gov.

Whether you have dark or light eyes depends almost entirely on genetics. Eyes come in a wide range of colors, some more common than others. These colors include blue, gray, green, hazel, and all the shades of brown—some so dark they almost look black. The more melanin that you have in your eyes (specifically in the stroma, one of the layers in the colored part of your eye known as the iris), the darker your eyes are.

Eye color used to be thought of as a pretty simple trait. Brown-eyed parents, it was thought, could have kids with any eye color—although they usually had brown-eyed kids. And blue-eyed parents, it was believed, could only have children with blue eyes. In this overly simple scenario, the brown eye color was "dominant" over the blue eye color.

It turns out that in real life, the inheritance of eye color is a bit more complicated. More often than this simple model in which brown eyes are dominant might predict, blue-eyed parents can have brown-eyed kids. This is because more than one gene is involved in the eye color trait.

Scientists have identified four well-studied markers linked to eye color in the TYR, OCA2, and HERC2 genes, and near the SLC24A4 gene. Your pattern at these genetic markers is what determines your eye color result. Some people have markers linked only to light eye color. Some have markers tied only to dark color. And others have a combination of both light eye color markers and dark eye color markers.

The most rare eye color in people around the world is green. The most common color is brown.

It's likely that originally all humans had brown eyes. Around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago a genetic mutation popped up in the Black Sea region that likely led to blue eyes. Actually, if you have blue eyes that does not indicate your having blue eye pigment. Instead, it indicates the front part of your eye has hardly any pigment at all. blue eyes indicates the lack of pigment, not the dominance of any particular color.

It's likely that originally all humans had brown eyes. Around 6,000 to 10,000 years ago a genetic mutation popped up in the Black Sea region that likely led to blue eyes. In fact, all blue-eyed people have are believed to have a common ancestor: a European from the Black Sea region who probably lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Blue eyes are most common in Northern Europe. A relatively high percentage (27%) of blue-eyed people in America is partially thanks to Americans with Eastern European, Irish, and British ancestry.

Today, brown is still the most widespread eye color in the world. Light brown eyes are most common in the Americas, West Asia, and Europe, while dark brown eyes are most frequently found in Africa, Southeast Asia, and East Asia.

Green eyes are most frequently found in Northern and Central Europe. Although green eyes can occur naturally in all races, about 16% of people with green-eyed people are of Germanic and Celtic ancestry. To be more precise, a staggering 86% of people from Ireland and Scotland have green eyes.

Less than 1% of the world’s population has gray eyes, which makes them one of the least common eye colors. The shades of gray eyes may vary from greenish to smokey blue to hazel-brown, which often depends on the environment, especially lighting. They are most common in Northern and Eastern Europe.

This is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

Do you have any old cassette tape recordings or even earlier reel-to-reel recordings that you would like to convert to digital audio files or to CD disks for preservation and possibly to share with others? That is a good idea for several reasons.

The tapes you have on hand might contain recordings made at family dinners or birthday parties or family reunions. Then again, perhaps you have all the classic Perry Como recordings that you would like to listen to once in a while. Whatever the recording, you need to convert every tape to modern media now, while you still can. With today's technology, "modern media" usually means a CD disk or a flash drive or an audio file saved on a hard disk.

Why should you do that now? First of all, tape players are becoming difficult to purchase. Have you looked in a local department store or electronics store for a cassette player? A few stores still sell them, but cassette players are rapidly disappearing. Reel-to-reel tape players are even harder to find.

Sure, you may still have a suitable player in the closet that will play your old tapes; but, what happens if that player malfunctions? Can you find a replacement?

A second reason is that tapes, especially cassette tapes, have a habit of destroying themselves. If that tape is the only copy available of a valuable family recording, the loss is insurmountable. "Gee, I should have copied that when it was available."

Even if you still have a tape player, keep in mind that the more you play a tape, the more its signal is degraded. Do you hear a hissing sound in the background when you play a tape? If so, that indicates that the tape is already degraded. Tapes are especially susceptible to heat, dirt, and magnetism, so get them converted while you can, before it degrades even more.

Finally, tape recordings of family events should be shared with the relatives. Duplicating tapes is a bit difficult, but duplicating CDs and digital audio files and then distributing them is very easy to do.

The process of copying tapes to modern media is surprisingly easy. In fact, some of the best software for that purpose is available free of charge. Hardware is also available, either in your closet or available for purchase at reasonable prices.

What you need

At the risk of oversimplifying, I will point out that all you need is a computer with a sound card (which includes almost every computer built within the past ten years), a suitable tape player, a cable to connect the two, and some audio recording software.

All modern Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers contain a built-in sound card. The computer you are using to read this article probably has what you need. Tablet computers often have everything needed, although not always. For the remainder of this article, I will assume that you are using a Windows or Macintosh desktop or laptop computer.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/12812626.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077.

Encrypted chat app Telegram recently released the following announcement:

Since the day Telegram was launched almost 9 years ago, we've been giving our users more features and resources than any other messaging app. A free app as powerful as Telegram was revolutionary in 2013 and is still unprecedented in 2022. To this day, our limits on chats, media and file uploads are unrivaled. And yet, many have been asking us to raise the current limits even further, so we looked into ways to let you go beyond what is already crazy. The problem here is that if we were to remove all limits for everyone, our server and traffic costs would have become unmanageable, so the party would be unfortunately over for everyone.

After giving it some thought, we realized that the only way to let our most demanding fans get more while keeping our existing features free is to make those raised limits a paid option. That's why this month we will introduce Telegram Premium, a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram and join the club that receives new features first. Not to worry though: all existing features remain free, and there are plenty of new free features coming. Moreover, even users who don't subscribe to Telegram Premium will be able to enjoy some of its benefits: for example, they will be able to view extra-large documents, media and stickers sent by Premium users, or tap to add Premium reactions already pinned to a message to react in the same way. While our experiments with privacy-focused ads in public one-to-many channels have been more successful than we expected, I believe that Telegram should be funded primarily by its users, not advertisers. This way our users will always remain our main priority.

My suggestion:

If you are a Telegram user (or even if you are not a Telegram user), and if you don't want to pay fees in order to exchange encrypted text messages, take a look at the always-free app, called Signal, at https://signal.org/en/.

All text messages sent with Signal are encrypted. The primary disadvantage with Signal is that both the sender and the receiver of text messages must be using Signal.

I have been using Signal for a couple of years now and love it. Best of all, your encrypted text messages on Signal cannot be monitored by Facebook (now called Meta), Google, Yahoo, the FBI, the CIA, Homeland Security, the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, or any other hackers.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

Millions of homes recorded in the 1901 census have now been plotted on historical georeferenced maps by TheGenealogist. Family history or house historians can now explore the areas where their ancestors lived and see how far it was for them to walk to the shops, visit their local pub, travel to work or take a train to another city or town.

Following on from their recent releases of the 1939 Register and the 1911 Census records linked to contemporary and modern map layers on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™, now the same innovative features have been applied to the 1901 Census of England and Wales.

With this release Diamond subscribers are able to pinpoint where their ancestors’ properties were at the time of the census count and so metaphorically walk the streets from the comfort of their home. Alternatively, users may access TheGenealogist on their mobile phone to physically discover the neighbourhood while on the move.

This key tool can make the lives of the family or house historian easier than ever to research census records for buildings and the newly linked 1901 census complements the rich georeferenced Lloyd George Domesday Survey and Tithe records that are already available on TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer™ as well as the 1939 Register and the 1911 Census records recently added to this website.

The majority of the London area and other towns and cities are viewable down to the property level, while other parts of the country will identify down to the parish, road or street.

With this new release, viewing a household record from the 1901 census will now show a map, locating your ancestors' house. Clicking on this map loads the location in Map Explorer™, enabling you to explore the area and see the records of neighbouring properties.

See TheGenealogist’s article about the 1901 Census on MapExplorer™: The Clog Dancers house and the paths they would have trodden. https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2022/the-clog-dancers-house-and-the-paths-they-would-have-trodden-1560/

Find out more at TheGenealogist.co.uk/maps/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!